What is the best word count for my SEO page meta description?
First, let’s define what an SEO meta description is. The SEO meta description of a page is between 60 to 90 characters optimized and up to 160 characters in length. The meta description is a website backend element, customers do not typically see this information on your actual web page but instead, Google uses it and will show The meta description information when people search your page on Google.
Pro Tip: The SEO meta description of a page can be edited via your web interface for your website. Usually, it is under the section of SEO within a page.
Of equal or more importance is your actual page content. page content can vary in length depending on what you need to say and how you need to convey its importance. Let’s talk a little bit about what Google says your page length should be.
Recently, Google’s Chief SEO Evangelist, John Mueller said that word count is not necessarily as important as you might think when Google ranks a page.
Google is getting smarter. In general terms, most pages that rank are comprehensive guides on the topic you searched for. This doesn’t just mean if their article is 1500 words you should write 1550 words. John Mueller says it’s all about content.
Writing an optimized meta description for SEO is similar to how you would craft a thesis statement after writing a paper. It’s best to write the meta description after your content is completed. This way you have a better idea of what keywords to focus on as well as encapsulate what you’ve written in that meta description. Like the thesis statement, the meta description should be a clear and concise sample of what your page is about.
We at Kow Abundant have personally tried various meta descriptions for our websites and found that the best way to optimize for SEO and improve rankings is a combination of both meta descriptions and on-page keywords and content. Having a good meta description can absolutely help your rankings but further strengthening that content on-page will give you the best bang for your buck.
What makes a good meta description?
We have tried many different meta descriptions for our own websites and found that the best meta descriptions on our pages are ones that are clear and include the most relevant keywords in those descriptions.
A dentist that focuses on gentle care for our patients and works in a clean environment.
Vs.
Top dentist in Columbus focusing on cleanings, dental exams, and accepts most insurance
In our experience, the second meta description is a better option for ranking. There are further optimizations that can be done to improve the wording but it’s a good start and will give better rankings overall as it includes references to top keywords as well as locality.
The problem with the first meta description is that it’s too general and really doesn’t give any detail to the business. The second meta description mentions a “top dentist” which is a popular keyword & other keywords including insurance. In this meta description, we use Columbus but you could substitute that for your location or local city to further improve ranking.
Sometimes we have found that if you focus on a large city within a popular industry like dentistry you’re less likely to be seen and would need to have more on-page content improvements.
How to write the best SEO content
It starts with the page! It doesn’t matter how much you optimize if you have nothing to say.
On-page SEO requires you to add relevant keywords into your content in a way that makes sense and is informative to your readers. Just putting in random keywords will make no sense and can actually penalize you overall.
You might often see many articles that say the ultimate guide or the end-all guide or the best guide for SEO. this is a popular tactic amongst SEO pros to rank for the said topic by basically filling every single possible keyword and outcome in at least a 1500 word piece.
it’s not just about the size of a piece but also the content that you’re optimizing for. Meta descriptions are more than just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SEO content. in fact, a good meta description can increase your ranking up to 15% according to search engine journal. We have personally seen rankings increase using these tactics for an optimized meta description.
The biggest SEO mistakes for small businesses
The biggest SEO mistakes for small businesses come when they keep their web pages too simple and have almost no content on a page.
If you are a local business, it’s important to have relevant keywords especially on your homepages for things like location, your services, areas that you focus on, and other relevant keywords that people would be searching to find your business. You can do this by answering questions that people post online about businesses like yours.
The good place to find these questions that people might be asking about your business is a site like Quora or Reddit.
A Kow Abundant, we have found that the best way to get answers is to ask your customers more questions. Customers are happy to give you their insights and to help your business.
Another major mistake small business websites make is they have too many duplicate meta descriptions. To improve your ranking factor for organic search results, your SEO meta descriptions should be unique for each page of your website.
Read this article for more https://www.searchenginejournal.com/word-count-for-seo/348164/
For meta description length you want to keep it between 90 to 160 characters and no keyword stuffing, relevant content here too.
“So my advice is before writing a single word, check out the search results and try to understand what users mean when they type a search query.” – Roger Montii
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